A Tale of Two Companies

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week Cathy Bencivenga.

I wish I had had time to dive a little deeper this week, but opening was more of a time suck than I thought it would be, and at the risk of getting soap-boxy, I had an insane two show day of crazy patrons and technical difficulties.

But, I think I have managed to thoroughly introduce you to my two companies, TACT (The Actors Company Theatre) and The Internationalists.

I mentioned the other day that I had the unique situation of having one company run by actors and one company run by directors. I know of many collaborative Indie companies run by mostly slashies (actors/directors/writers, etc) but these are two of very few companies that I know of created and run by such specific subsets, and I think in both cases it highly defines their working methods.

Similarly, I mentioned how each company operates outside the typical OOB world. For The Internationalists, it's under the radar, producing mostly short runs or web based events, often not utilizing a showcase code or AEA actors so that we can avoid video recording or development process guidelines. With TACT, we float in the world between OOB and OB, competing on high levels with more limited resources than most of our peers.

Both companies are also tied strongly to very specific, highly motivating missions and maintain a constant eye to producing at the highest level of quality for their means.

Ultimately, it's all of these qualities that gives each of them their identities within the vast NYC theatre landscape. And, I think in that they are great examples of what the indie community has to offer that is interesting. Particularly working at Theatre Row over the last 5 years, I have seen a lot of companies come in and out around us that for the most part are indistinguishable from each other, getting lost in a sea of "similar." And if I have any message for my theatre making peers out there, it is to do something different, distinguishable.

As a final piece of shameless promotion - come see The Memorandum and/or participate in this awesome workshop http://theinternationalists.org/ira.html.

Also, a big thanks to Shay and Morgan and the rest of the IT folk for having me this week. If not a constant blogger, you've certainly turned me into an avid "Full of IT" reader. 

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The Gray Area of New York Theatre

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week Cathy Bencivenga.

TACT (The Actors Company Theatre) was founded in 1992 by a group of mid-career actors with the mission to do rarely seen plays of literary merit. 18 years later, many of the original company members are still involved and TACT maintains one of the few groups in the city with a repertory company of actors.  I have the unique point of view of having one company that consists of all actors and another that consists of all directors.

For its first 14 years, TACT existed primarily as a reader's theatre doing concert performances (think Encores!, which debuted the same year) of lost gems in three or four performance spurts. Having built up a hefty subscriber and donor base and looking to delve deeper, TACT began doing fully realized productions in 2005. Since then, we have become a resident company in the Beckett Theatre at Theatre Row, presenting two six week runs there each season.

In the beginning we produced on a modified-by-concession seasonal showcase in which AEA allowed us to set a firm fee to the actors instead of a percentage of income, and after two seasons we moved on to the newly created Transition contract. While not perfect, the Transition contract is an answer to the difficulties companies were having stepping from the showcase to an LOA. It is a 3 year tiered contract that allows for lower weekly salary in exchange for less rehearsal hours and total performances and still restricts to a 99 seat house. I highly recommend it to companies looking to move past a showcase code.

While on contract and therefore officially "Off Broadway," TACT exists in a gray area of New York theatre. Ticket price and audience-wise we compete with major Off Broadway companies several times our size, yet because of our theatre size, we don't qualify for things like the Lortel Awards and barely run long enough to get real word of mouth momentum going.

Last night we opened The Memorandum by Vaclav Havel. A quintessential TACT play, Memo is a quirky satire on bureaucracy gone mad that hasn't been seen in a major NY production since its 1968 premier as part of the inaugural season at the Public Theater.  We had some bad luck in the room, namely the losing our lead actor two weeks ago when he was hit by a car, but the production has pulled together well and has had respectable reviews trickling in all day. 

Now that I've given some background, for my final post tomorrow I'll talk a little bit about what The Internationalists and TACT have in common and how they relate to the OOB community. 

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Interactive Global Theatrical Community

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week Cathy Bencivenga.

Well, I'll start out by saying hello and introducing myself. Hi there, I'm Cathy, and I'm both very flattered and very excited to be your guest blogger for the week. As my bio succinctly points out, I am, like most of you, a filler of many positions. Mainly, but not exclusively, those of General Manager for TACT/The Actors Company Theatre, an Off Broadway company now in its 18th season of presenting rarely seen plays (www.tactnyc.org), and Managing Director of The Internationalists, a collective of directors from around the world (www.theinternationalists.org). As a representative of these two separate and distinct organizations, I thought I would split up my posts this week and spend some time discussing my thoughts on each.  My goal is to ultimately land on what makes such different working environments actually pretty similar, and how they relate to the OOB landscape.

Thankfully, Amanda's post on World Theatre Day left me with a beautiful segue to discuss The Internationalists. We came together in the summer of 2007, when our members met while participating in the Lincoln Center Directors Lab. It was clear that there was a craving for more opportunities for artists of different countries and cultures to work together, and we set out to create a more, "open, sustainable, and interactive global theatrical community." The challenges to creating an international company were both extensive and immediately apparent - communication first. It's hard enough to communicate when you're across a table, much less across an ocean, but we had time differences, language barriers, and varying technologies all in our way. Then of course there's the legal stuff - visas, unions, and dun dun dun... money.

That said, I think what could be deemed the biggest challenge has ultimately become our driving force: our vastly different points of view regarding how "theatre" is defined. Does it have to be in one place? At one time? Does it have to have an audience? Does it have to be live? Our different theatrical backgrounds and cultures have given us (even those from the same country) a huge span of opinions and perspectives. In my previous experience, no matter how differing our taste or techniques may have been, there was a general consensus of format. There was a script, a stage, audience, set, lights, etc, etc. But with The Internationalists is presumption is not the case. One of the most enlightening moments I've had was when our member Dina Keller from Germany explained to us that she had been trained never to consider the audience when developing a piece of theatre. This was a revelation to me that boiled down what I think is the most basic element of how Dina's style differs from other directors in the collective, and I constantly revisit it when experiencing Dina's work.

Likewise, our heavy reliance on internet to communicate with each other has led us to find ways to incorporate internet technologies in the work we do together. For instance, the last two Novembers, we've presented an event called "Around the World in 24 Hours" in which we initiated and/or curated 24 continuous hours of international programming. With events some occurring live in NY, some streamed in live from other countries, and some prerecorded, the entire 24 hours was then streamed out for mostly online audience. In 2009 we had hundreds of viewers tune in from over 60 countries.

Given these goals and challenges, our creative output, more often than not, doesn't fit into 16 performance run of a showcase. We present mostly mini-festivals and one night events. This year we are forgoing the 24 hour element of the Around the World Festival in order to focus on a direct exchange between New York and Germany (to be presented at Surreal Estate on November 13).

I've rambled for a while, so I'll wrap up, but I can't end this blog without another little plug for World Theatre Day. We've hosted events in NYC for the last three years and were thrilled to join forces with the rest of the coalition last year to help spread the word. As Amanda discussed, WTD is an easy way to acknowledge and celebrate the vastness of the international theatre community.

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Guest Blogger of the week: Cathy Bencivenga

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We would like to thank Amanda Feldman for her great blogs last week and for giving us all so much to think about.

We are very happy to announce that this week's guest blogger is Cathy Bencivenga.

Cathy Bencivenga is the General Manager for TACT/The Actors Company Theatre and the Managing Director of The Internationalists. GM/Producing Credits include: A Weird Bar in London (Old Vic New Voices T.S. Eliot Exchange); The Memorandum, The Cocktail Party, The Late Christopher Bean, Incident at Vichy, Bedroom Farce, The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, The Runner Stumbles, The Sea, and Home (TACT Off Broadway at Theatre Row); Seeing Stars (NYMF); Around the World in 24 Hours 2008 & 2009, Decomposition, and WHICH DIRECTION HOME? (The Internationalists); Tejas Verdes (THALATTA!), The Actor's Nightmare & Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, the 10th Annual Black Box New Play Festival, and Six Degrees of Separation (The Gallery Players). Associate Producer: Take Me Out (The Gallery Players), Word and Thought (Cameo Productions with The Austiner Ensemble, World Premiere). Cathy holds a BA in performing Arts Management from Southwestern University. 

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